Sunday, 21 November 2010

Can leadership abilities be detected in brain scans?

Whilst the debate about the
root of good leadership is engaging an increasingly larger number of HR
professionals, business leaders and academics, and is becoming the more and
more passionate in a bid to ultimately find out whether leadership is an inborn
quality or can be actually learned, scientists are investigating whereas it is
rather a cerebral feature.

Differently
from those who sustain that leadership can be learned, the advocates of the
idea that leadership is an inborn feature contend that genuine leaders owe this
ability to their “innate traits” and that individuals not having received this
natural gift cannot gain leadership abilities by learning. Whether the scientists’
belief which leadership abilities relate to a “biological factor” should prove
to be true, the theory that leadership is an innate aptitude may sensibly gain
ground vis-à-vis that sustaining that leadership can be learned.

It is difficult to say
whether in the not-too-distant future head-hunters will make their decisions about
the recruitment of senior managers and executives on the basis of the applicant
brain scans, rather than of their CVs and interviews. Nonetheless, the pioneering
study conducted by the Reading University, regardless of the results it will
produce and albeit it is too early to deem it promising, seems to be if
anything really interesting.

The investigation is
conducted by Dr Money, of Henley Business School, who outlines the aims and
objectives of the investigation: "We hope to look at how leaders from
different sectors make decisions, what actually leads people to move from
making good to bad decisions, what goes on in people's minds and how they make
those choices" (Money, 2010).

The
launch of the investigation has seen protagonist Sir John Madejski, a leading
British business leader, who after having been prepared by a team of scientists
was gently wheeled into a Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scan, where he spent
45 minutes. During this period of time Sir Madejski was not indeed just
passively waiting for the machine to perform its scan activities, but was asked
to complete a number of exercises implying decision-making activities in the
presence of Professor Saddy of the Reading's Centre for Integrative
Neuroscience and Neurodynamics.

Sir Madejski was
basically asked to make some financial decisions, which were confirmed pressing
the buttons of a special keypad placed inside the MRI scanner. "In this
case", explains Professor Saddy (2010), "what he is being asked to do
is make a judgement about whether given a certain set of information a
short-term reward would be better than a long-term reward." Whilst Sir Madejski
was performing his decision-making activity into the scan, his brain activity
was measured by the cutting-edge £1m MRI scanner.

The
investigation carried out with the help of Sir Madejski is not clearly enough
to reach reliable conclusions; he was in fact the first volunteer available to
start the experiment and was so enthusiastic as to promise to support the study
encouraging other leading businessmen to “lend” their brains to the University
for scanning purposes. In order to gather significant information the
experiment needs to be obviously replicated several times. Neuroscientists, psychologists
and management experts at Reading University aim at this moment in time at examining
more in particular the brains of the business chief executives and of the senior
executives of different industries like voluntary organisations and the military.

Dr Money (2010), who
suggests to treat the experiment with some caution for the moment, especially
as for what concerns the immediate results of the study, stresses the
importance of conducting a significant number of experiments before reaching a
conclusion: "It's way too early, we can't look at one person's brain and
conclude too much. What we can do is look at different groups, say military and
business leaders, and compare leadership education within those different
groups."

Using
technology to understand what makes a good leader is not actually a completely new
technique. For decades organisations across the globe have used psychometric
tests to select candidates, habitually for senior management positions, and to
try and find out what behind a good leader.

Psychometric,
nonetheless, is considered by many as a controversial science and has as such supporters
and detractors. Saville (2010), who belongs to the former group, claims that
such a technique dates back to the techniques used by Samuel Pepys to select
naval officers and contends that psychometric tests make a valuable
contribution to the process of selecting the right candidate for the appropriate
position: "You still find interviewers who judge people on the first
minute of an interview", he says, "all we are doing is reducing the
odds of choosing the wrong person. It's science versus sentiment."

It
is indeed sorely impossible to say today whether it is realistic believing that
there is a chance that the recruitment industry, which already uses
psychometric tests, will have the option to resort to brain scans or other
technological means in the future. Virginia Eastman head-hunter with Heidrick
and Struggles, who recruits candidates for senior roles in global media
organisations, for instance, appears to be rather sceptical. She claims that
new technologies are helping to make the process of communicating with and
assessing suitable leaders more rapid but she adds: "Our whole profession
is built on one thing, the consensus that we all know what good looks like, and
that we make that judgement. No machine can replace that" (Eastman, 2010).

According to Eastman
(2010), albeit neuroscientists and psychologists believe that they can make a
real contribution to the head-hunters’ understanding of what makes leaders
effective, those whose job is to select leaders still believe it is more of an
art, rather than a matter of technology. Notwithstanding, it is extremely
important do not forgetting that, irrespective of the results technology will
be able to yield, brain scans (provided that the final findings of the investigation
conducted at the Reading University will prove to be successful) and similar tests
should not be exclusively used to make the final decision.

Both
the CIPD (2010) and the British Psychological Society (BPS, 2010) recommend
that tests have not to be used in a judgmental, decisive mode. Torrington et
al. (2008) stress the idea that the results produced by tests have to be used
only to stimulate discussion with candidates and that every time recruiters use
test methodologies, candidates should invariably receive feedback.

The CIPD (2010) warns that using the information
provided by such types of tests to make final recruitment decisions may result
in breaching some regulations (for instance, in the UK the 1998 Data Protection
Act) so that these should only be used as part of a wider process where the indications
received from the results of these tests can be backed by other sources. Yet, Ceci
and Williams (2000) have warned of the risks related to the use of norm tables,
pointing out that these change over time so that using old tests with old norms
might very likely result to be deceptive.

All in all, tests and scans, provided that these
may actually give significant information, should not be used to the detriment
of the recruiter feelings, sensations and experience. Brain scans are likely to
be extremely expensive whether it is necessary a £1 m machine to perform them.
Yet, it is also very likely that the practitioners in charge of making the
final reports might require time to submit these. It is hence improbable that
recruiters may be able to effectually use these any time soon.